


Bertie Wooster Sees Through It

by triedunture



Category: Jeeves & Wooster
Genre: M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-14
Updated: 2010-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture/pseuds/triedunture
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://katma.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://katma.livejournal.com/"><b>katma</b></a>. Bertie Wooster has written six Jeeves novels, is editing the seventh, and trying dashed hard to start the eighth. Maybe it's time, he thinks, to stop writing Jeeves novels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bertie Wooster Sees Through It

Title: Bertie Wooster Sees Through It  
Pairing: Jeeves + Wooster  
Rating: PG13  
Length: 8400 words  
Warnings: none really, a dash of angst and metaphysical weirdness

Summary: For [](http://katma.livejournal.com/profile)[**katma**](http://katma.livejournal.com/). Bertie Wooster has written six Jeeves novels, is editing the seventh, and trying dashed hard to start the eighth. Maybe it's time, he thinks, to stop writing Jeeves novels.

<><><>

  
_There are times in a young gentleman’s life when he can do nothing but cling to the window ledge upon which he has been hiding from his dreaded fiancée and aunt and wonder how it all came to this. “Jeeves,” I said to my impeccable manservant, who was clinging not twelve inches away from self, “one must wonder how it all came to this.”_

_“Certainly, sir,” he answered, unperturbed, with not a drop of sweat upon his brow. “However, if I may crave a boon of you, sir, and ask that your thoughts on the matter be put aside for one moment?”_

_“Of course, my good man.”_

_“I believe if we swing with the correct timing, we will be able to reach the far window safely.”_

_“Oh, right-o,” I agreed, and began to swing with al-something. Alsatian? Aluminium? Alacrity!_

_Dash it, I’m afraid I’ve done it again, bunging you right into the middle of the thing when all you want is to know exactly how--_

The telephone buzzed. I ignored it.

_When all you want is to know exactly how...._

The telephone did not stop. Whomever it was didn’t seem to want to give the thing up as a bad job. Well, I thought with a sigh, it didn’t matter; the line was gone. I had lost it for good.

I stood from my writing desk, my spine popping and creaking as I made the slow ascent into the vertical. My groans issued forth liberally; if I wasn’t careful, I’d be the only man in London with a stoop at the age of twenty-six.

I made my way to the ‘phone, dodging the wadded-up piles of paper, the stacks of dirty tea cups on the floor, the overflowing ashtrays I’d moved groundward to make space on the desk, and the hastily kicked off shoes on the carpet. One doesn’t like to live such a slovenly existence but given the circs. it can’t be helped. Let he who is in the midst of writing his own novel cast the first stone, I say.

I picked up the relentless telephone. “Wooster here,” I said, my voice cracked and rusty from disuse. I hadn’t spoken to a soul all day, what with being so wrapped up in my work.

“Bertie!” the shrill voice called down the line. That particular decibel could only belong to my editor, Hudson “Perky” Perkins. “I wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten about the appointment with the reporter from the _Times_ at three.”

Of course I hadn’t forgotten, I said (though the truth was, well, I had).

“Blast you,” Perky seethed, seeing through my tissue of lies. “You’d have left the poor blighter high and dry, just like that last chap from the _Guardian_. Bertie, my staff and I go to great lengths to get you these interviews. My other writers would absolutely murder to have a go at the _Times_ ; why must you insist on being such a prat!?” It might be worth mentioning at this juncture that Perky was probably my closest friend, and as such, he was allowed to use “prat” as a term of endearment. And he took advantage of the privilege quite often.

I sighed and searched my pockets for a cigarette, jamming the receiver between my ear and shoulder as I did so. “I told you before, Perky, I _am_ sorry about that whole business, but you know I’m rubbish at keeping appointments; they just slip my mind if I’m in the middle of a story. And you do want me to be in the middle of a story, don’t you?”

Perky grumbled as was his wont. “Yes, I suppose so, Lord knows why. Now promise me you’ll be there at this interview by three.”

“Anything for the _Times_.”

As Perky rattled off the name and address of the restaurant he had chosen for the interview, I frantically clawed for my pocket watch. One forty-five. Right. Plenty of time for a shave before I left. One must not look unkempt at an interview, if one doesn’t want one’s editor to beat one to a pulp.

So I left myself and Jeeves still hanging precariously from a ledge while I shoved myself into a fresh suit. Once my hair was combed and my chin was shaven, I made my way to the door, only tripping over over one thing, an empty piece of luggage I had neglected to stow away after my last trip to the country.

I shook my head as I steadied myself against the hallway wall. “I really do wish I had a Jeeves,” I muttered to myself not for the first time. My family often joked that I needed a valet more than anyone, but (the joke went) I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than Jeeves himself. There may have been some truth to that, but my given reason for not hiring any help was that they were so dashed distracting when I was trying to write. I used to employ a cleaning woman to come round thrice a week, and even that was too much. The noise of her humming and breathing! Intolerable. So I resigned myself to living in somewhat of a pig sty.

The interview turned out to be very dull. The reporter was quite the greenhorn, I suppose, for he asked a lot of questions he could have found in any of my early interviews.

“Where do you get your ideas, Mr Wooster?” he asked, his pencil nervously poised over his little notepad. “Are the characters based on your acquaintances?”

I smiled thinly. “I suppose you could see bits and pieces of real people in them, of course, but the characters are all figments of my imagination. No one in reality is as daft as the Drones, for example.” This itself was a fiction. I had plenty of old school chums who were even more empty-headed than the Drones who populated my little world of make-believe. I had often been accused of satirising this or that public figure, but if someone saw a similarity between Lord Uffington and Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, or between the Drones and Buck’s Club, well then, it was their own imagination at work. I had only given it the slightest nudge.

“Ah, yes. In that same vein,” the reporter continued, “readers must wonder where you end and the narrator who shares your name begins. Do you often receive concerned letters asking how you’re faring against your Aunt Agatha and Aunt Dahlia, for instance?”

I laughed and tapped the ash from my cigarette. (It was on loan from the newsman; I had forgotten to fill my case before leaving the flat.) “In actuality I have only one aunt, and she is a perfectly ordinary sort of relation. I often assure readers that I am safe from auntly harm, for the most part.” He jotted this down.

“So this is your sixth novel starring the much-loved character, Jeeves,” he said. I nodded with only my eyes as I sipped my brandy and soda. “Do you think you have many more Jeeves stories in you?”

I faltered, my fingers nearly slipping from my borrowed gasper. “Well,” I said carefully, “he is, as you say, quite popular. My publisher tells me that as long as there are readers who want Jeeves, I am in the position to provide him. I suppose I will write Jeeves stories until everyone is truly sick and tired of it. Then I might have to write murder mysteries or some horrid thing. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

A few more easy questions, and I was free to escape the interview and return to work. I had been itching to get back to my typewriter at the start of the interview, but during the walk home I was feeling a mite subdued. It was that bally question about “how many Jeeves stories did I have in me.” I’d been asked it before, and it still rankled.

The truth was, I wasn’t sure how many I had left. It was getting more and more difficult to complete the Jeeves novels. Each story was so complicated, and I’d created such a large cast of characters, I sometimes wondered if I’d let things get out of hand. I pondered this as I stopped in at the tobacconist’s to refill my cigarette case.

Finally puffing at some good Turkish and walking homeward, I turned my mind to the real problem: Jeeves. If anything could ever be described as larger than life, Jeeves was it. He had begun as something so small, just a bit character, a throwaway plot point. But I’d kept at him for some reason, kept building and building until he grew to a six-foot-something fish-obsessed Shakespeare-quoting demigod. He ruled my story world; he whispered in my head while I tossed and turned in bed at night; he had a voice and a soul and a heart. He was becoming much too real for me to write.

I loved all my silly stories in my own way, but Jeeves was different, and not just because he’d made me famous and a bit rich. No, I loved Jeeves because the thought of him made me ecstatically happy.

And no wonder, I mused darkly as I arrived home. I looked round the sitting room with its ink spots on the carpet, the cigarette burns on the chesterfield, the general disorder and stale smell. Of course I longed for Jeeves; who wouldn’t want a magical servant to sweep in and take all the responsibility of cooking and cleaning and paying the bills and mending the clothes and _being a bloody adult_? Lord knew I was no good at any of it.

I tossed my suitcoat over a vase and threw myself into my armchair. Perhaps it was time to stop writing Jeeves stories, I thought. The sixth was being published next week, and a seventh was being edited by the long-suffering Perky, and I couldn’t seem to begin the eighth properly. Maybe seven was plenty. Quit while you’re ahead and all that.

I reached over to the side table and picked up my worn copy of _Carry On, Jeeves_. It was one of my favorite editions, chiefly due to the illustration on the cover. Oftentimes the publishers would hire an artist to paint Jeeves as an old, balding, portly bird, and that was fine; that’s what most people thought of when they thought of Jeeves. But this illustration was more true to what I imagined when I pictured Jeeves: Tall, ageless, skin like marble, shining black hair. Rather handsome. I mean, if you like that sort of moving-picture-star look. I studied the simple sketch on the cover and smiled.

Suddenly I was overcome with exhaustion. How long had I been awake? Had I eaten breakfast at all? Was the cheque for the electric in the postbox? My eyelids began to droop. I had been working so hard lately. Perhaps, I considered, a short nap would be just the ticket. Yes, certainly, just...the....

I awoke to the strange sensation of actually being in my bed. Usually I grabbed the forty winks at my desk or on the chesterfield between writing sessions; my bed was becoming foreign territory to me during this stint on the new novel. And yet here I was, surrounded by eiderdown and soft cotton.

I sat up slowly, my head aching like I’d downed sixteen hard ones at lunch, but I only remembered having the single b. and s. And--good Lord--was I wearing my pyjamas? I’d forgotten I owned pyjamas!

A steaming teacup materialised before my eyes, held aloft by a large, steady hand.

“Good morning, sir,” a deep voice rumbled. “Your tea.”

My wide eyes stared at the hand and travelled up the black morning-coated arm to the capable, broad shoulder and finally to the sharp, marble-chiseled visage of the man standing at my bedside.

“What the devil--?” I whispered.

“I assure you, sir, it is the usual Darjeeling,” he said.

In my haste to make an escape from the intruder, I tumbled out of the far side of the bed, my legs tangled in the bedclothes. “Who are you?” I demanded, trying to sound authoritative. “What are you doing here? How did you get into my flat!?”

The man, who was wearing a crisp servant’s uniform, merely said, “Perhaps you require more rest, sir. If I may--”

I threw my arms up to defend myself. “Get back, you madman!” I had dealt with rabid readers before, but this was just not on. For someone to dress as my character Jeeves, break into my home, and force tea on me, he had to be well and truly bonkers. “What do you want!?”

“Mr Wooster, please calm yourself.” The tea disappeared--there is no other word for it; one moment it was there in the blighter’s hands and the next it was gone--and he held his empty hands up pleadingly.

I stared at him. “How did you do that?” I asked, stunned. “Are you some sort of magician?”

The man did not smile, but there was some sort of quiver round his lips that told me he had considered it. “You have often called me such, sir, though it humbles me.”

I squinted at him, taking in all the details. The voice that had chased me down in my sleep. The shining hair on the regal head. The piercing intelligence in the eyes. It was impossible, and yet, it was here.

“...Jeeves?” I asked.

Jeeves bowed. “In the flesh,” he said.

To my credit, I did not faint. It was, however, a near thing. I felt my knees turn to jelly just as the bottom dropped out of my stomach. “But how? Why--? What did--?” I clutched at the bedroom curtains to keep myself steady, but the strange apparition shimmered (literally shimmered, as in moved so quickly he was just a blur) over to my side and lent a supporting hand to my elbow while uncurling my fingers from the smooth drapes.

“Perhaps you would like to sit down, sir?”

And so I found myself sitting at my little kitchen table with my shaking hands wrapped round a fresh cup of tea, staring in disbelief at the man dressed in valet’s togs. He puttered about the kitchen a bit, and then I asked him to please stop moving so much, as I was certain I was going mad, and I would much prefer to go mad with everyone seated comfortably. Jeeves--there was no other name for him--sat across from me and bore my staring with quiet dignity.

“You’re not real,” I finally managed to say.

“I am well aware of that, sir,” Jeeves said.

“Really?” I was surprised. For a fictional chap who was suddenly toddling round with the living and breathing, he seemed to be taking it rather well.

“Yes, sir. I noticed the state of the flat was not as I remembered leaving it, and as I tidied up it became increasingly apparent that I was not bound by the laws of physics as one usually is.” Well. That explained the vanishing teacups and general blurry speed at which he operated.

“So how did you get here, with me, in the real world?” I took a fortifying sip of tea. Dear God, it was the most exceptional tea I’d ever drank. I looked into the depths of my cup in awe.

Jeeves folded his hands on the tabletop. “I’m sure I don’t know, sir. It is difficult to put into words the last thing I remember before waking up here in the flat, as I did not exactly awaken. Rather, I snapped into consciousness while standing in the middle of the kitchen.”

“And you decided to just scrub the place clean and serve me my morning tea as if nothing unusual were afoot?”

“Well, sir, life’s little quirks are hardly any excuse for neglecting one’s duties.” He blinked his crisp blue eyes once, twice, his soft mouth forming just the slightest smirk.

I stared some more. “You really are perfect,” I whispered.

“Thank you, sir.” Jeeves gave a little bow of his head. “Shall I prepare breakfast?”

Where he found the eggs and b., I’ll never know. But within minutes I was being served the most delicious poached eggs on golden triangles of toast accompanied by crisp rashers of bacon and fresh orange juice. I looked up from the fantastic spread, my mouth hanging open, I’m sure. Jeeves inclined his head in that way of his--well, the way I’d often written of--which means he knows how impressed I am. His little gesture of acknowledgment. I’d envisioned it a thousand times, and here it was finally, his regal nod.

“Rum” wasn’t the half of it, but before I could dig into this strange business, I had to eat something. So I dug into the toothsome fare with gusto. It was abundantly clear that the food was not of this earth. It was just too wonderful: the eggs were too fluffy to be real eggs, the toast was too toasty to be real toast, etc.

While I chewed, Jeeves floated round the kitchen, washing this dish, wiping that counter top. I watched him closely, trying to divine whether his feet actually touched the floor or if his skin actually had any pores. He was sodding Rudolph Valentino crossed with Mary Poppins.

Jeeves must have felt my acute gaze, for he turned from the sink and nodded to me.

“Sorry,” I said with a sudden start. “It’s just very difficult to take in. I feel as if I’m in a waking dream. You’re just so, well.” I waved a hand at him. Despite the strange business of having my character come to life, I couldn’t fight the grin spreading over my map. “So Jeeves! It’s just marvellous!”

Perhaps it was only my imagination (well, of course it was; Jeeves was composed of my imagination) but Jeeves looked a bit downcast at that. His eyes dropped back to the sink and he kept scrubbing at a plate. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

“Something wrong?” I asked, popping the last bit of toast into my mouth.

“My apologies, sir,” Jeeves said, and his voice was a husky thing, “but I only wish I could share your delight in our current circumstances.”

My face fell like an anvil off the leaning tower. “You don’t like it here?” I tried for something other than a plaintive whine, but I’m afraid that’s how it came out.

Jeeves gave the dish a meditative dry with a tea towel. “It’s not that I do not find your company enjoyable, sir, but please try to understand.” He placed the dish aside and looked at me. Really looked at me, his eyes pleading his case. “Your speech, your features, your manner of dress: they are all familiar, but not quite. Like a vague dream.” He looked away, down at his feet, worry etched on his brow. “You are not the Bertram Wooster I know.”

If I had any doubts about this man really being Jeeves, they’d have been dashed by those words. This quiet affection and concern for his master, it was exactly what I envisioned to be at the core of Jeeves’ character. Well. Sometimes, when it was just me and my head, you know, I would envision quite a bit more. It’s daft, I know, but what other motivation could there be for a valet as upstanding as Jeeves choosing to serve a silly ass like Bertram? This is the fault of all writers: to do more work than they need to, work that no one else ever will (or in my case, ever can) see.

“It’s very true,” I said, picking my words with care, “that I am not the same man you know as B.W. Wooster. It makes for a better story, you know, to exaggerate some things and leave out others. For comedy’s sake, of course. In real life, I don’t struggle for the right thing to say very often, and I don’t pinch helmets from constables, and I don’t get engaged every time I step out onto the street. But I am every inch a complete fool, if it makes you feel at all better.”

A sliver of a smile appeared for a moment, then was gone. “Well, sir,” he said, and he left it at that.

I continued: “Now, I’m sure the Wooster you know is just fine at the moment. After all, he can’t get in any trouble unless I write it out for him, what? And I haven’t written a word.”

Jeeves pressed a fingertip to his lips in thought. Good Lord, that certainly was a familiar gesture. “It does occur to me that my existence is not as linear as events in this world appear. If I concentrate, I can recall large gaps in my adventures with Mr Wooster that, at the time, seemed perfectly natural. However, I now suspect we simply did not exist unless you,” he _looked_ at me again, “brought us to life.”

“One doesn’t like to brag,” I said, “but I think I did a rather corking job of it.”

Jeeves cleared my breakfast dishes with what seemed to be a mere wave of his hand. “Yes, sir. I agree entirely.”

We passed the day in something of a trance. I watched Jeeves work his particular brand of magic--real, honest-to-goodness magic--on the flat and my wardrobe. He tsked at my taste for bright colours, which was as awful as that of my fictional self, and I allowed him to dispose of whatever he liked. It was impossible not to give him that; imagine running into Sherlock Holmes and not prodding him into deducing from your shoe’s muck where you’d been born.

For my part, once Jeeves had cleaned off the piano, I favoured him with a few songs at his request. I’d always been a musical bird; I hadn’t been afraid to gift my narrator with that ability, as I had some inkling of the skill involved. And so I played a few ditties as best I could, and finished with a bit of showboating down the old ivories. I looked up from the keys to find Jeeves standing there, staring at me as if I’d invented air--a turn of events I wasn’t going to complain about.

“Sir,” he said with feeling. He groped behind himself for a chair, and then sat. “I have never heard anything so--” Jeeves shook his head. “I have no words. It was magnificent.”

I flushed hotly, unused to such praise. I was a fair player, to be sure, but I wasn’t an expert by any stretch of the imag. I knew several coves down at Buck’s who could play circles round me. “Oh, really now,” I demurred.

“Please do not doubt my sincerity, sir. The sound was so robust, so alive.” He rubbed his large palms on the tops of his thighs. “You truly must be a virtuoso in this as well as writing.”

I considered this for a tick, then snapped my fingers as the explanation came to me. “Jeeves! I’m bally well _not_ a genius at writing! That’s why you’ve never heard real music before!”

“Sir?”

“It’s like this,” I said. “I’ve often found that music, even the silly popular stuff, is dashed hard to get across in words. Not a lot of people can manage it, least of all me. So when I write about songs in my stories, what you hear in those stories is just, well, it’s just a pale substitute for the real deal. That must be why you’re so blown away by my playing.”

Jeeves blinked in thought, lifting a hand to brush against the polished flank of my baby grand. “You mean this is the first time in my life I’ve actually heard music?” he asked softly.

“I think so, yes.”

He looked up at me, his dark blue eyes shining in the dim evening light of the sitting room. “It was so beautiful,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”

I broke into a wide grin. “Golly, I wonder what else you’ve never experienced in my pretend world that you might now.”

Jeeves’ gaze moved away from mine, tarrying over to the window or something. “Yes. I wonder as well, sir.” He paused for just a moment, then rose with feline grace. “Shall I mix an evening cocktail for you, sir?”

“If you can find anything to mix it with, then certainly,” I answered, and I watched him flicker away to do his duty. I felt the smile slip from my map after he was out of sight. Poor old thing, I thought. What was to become of him?

I resolved to do what I always did when questions popped up to which I had no answer. I would put it to Perky. He’d tell me what I should do. Or at least, what I was legally obligated to do. Editors are quite skilled at that.

Just as I was getting ready for bed (pyjamas, teeth cleaning, and a bit of a gargle), I realised Jeeves did not have a place to sleep. My actual flat had no servant’s quarters to speak of; the small room which would have served as a valet’s lair was currently being used as a junk room of sorts. Cricket bats, ancient umbrellas, golf clubs, an old chesterfield, that sort of rot. “Jeeves,” I called to the man, who was fluffing my pillows, “where do you plan on bedding down? I have a guest room down the--”

“I will retire to my usual room, sir,” Jeeves’ answer floated back to me.

“But Jeeves, that room isn’t--”

Jeeves materialised behind me in the bathroom mirror. “I have remedied that situation, sir.” He led me to the little room and showed me what he’d done: the room was now cleared of all debris and decorated in a Spartan fashion with a simple iron bed, cupboard, and dresser.

I gurgled. “My clubs?”

The valet opened cupboard and retrieved a golfing bag. “Your clubs, sir. And,” he indicated the much-too small cupboard, “everything else you had stored.”

I peeked inside the thing. Sure enough, everything was packed in neatly although it just wasn’t possible for such a small piece of furniture to hold a room’s worth of castoffs. “Brilliant,” I breathed.

“Thank you, sir,” Jeeves said. He shut the cabinet door, but suddenly hissed in pain, cradling his hand to his chest.

“Jeeves! What’s happened?” I sprang to his side.

“I’m not certain,” he said. He examined his hand. “Sir, something has bit me, I think.”

I peered at his hand and saw a small dot of blood welling up on his fingertip. Embedded in his skin was a small shard of wood. “Oh, Jeeves, it’s just a splinter!” I laughed. “You had me so worried. Here, let me get it for you.”

As I carefully prodded at his hand, Jeeves’ brow seemed to furrow even more. “A splinter?” he asked, pronouncing the word as if it was Esperanto.

“Yes, surely you’ve had one before. Don’t fret.” I concentrated on working the shard free of his fingertip.

“Sir,” Jeeves said slowly, “I have never undergone such a thing. Furthermore, I have never known of such a thing.” He bowed his head. “Where I come from, there is little in the way of mundane pains of life.”

I looked up at him, shocked that I hadn’t considered that before. “Oh. Oh, I see. Well.” I returned my attention to the splinter and finally got it out. “There you are. Good as new. Sorry you had to experience that bit of mundane pain, as you call it.”

“Thank you, sir.” And with that, we parted ways for the night.

The next morning, Jeeves dressed me in a tasteful suit and tie (which I had never seen in my life and had no idea how he’d produced it) and agreed to accompany me to my publisher’s offices. He didn’t give any indication that he knew what I had in mind as far as showing him to anyone; he only said, “It would be very pleasant to walk the streets and see what there is the see, sir.”

We left Berkeley Square and headed toward Montague Street at a fair clip. The day was a fairly normal one: slightly overcast, beastly humid, with a bit of a fetid stench in the air, as it was the day the rubbish was put out on the street for the bin men. I walked eastward with a spring in my step and a whistle on my lips, swinging my whangee with gay abandon. In fact, the excitement that I was about to show Perky my words-made-flesh distracted me from the faint sniff of displeasure Jeeves bestowed on our surroundings. It wasn’t until we’d reached Charing Cross  
that I noticed something was amiss.

“Jeeves,” I said as I watched him shy away from his side of the pavement with skittish steps, “are you quite all right?”

“I apologise, sir,” he rumbled. “I fear the strange sensation of seeing the true London has affected me more than I predicted it would.” He glanced over his shoulder at whatever he’d avoided, and I followed his gaze. A filthy street urchin, dressed in rags, sat there on the flagstones, crying after us for any coins we might wish to spare.

“You never wrote of this London, sir,” Jeeves whispered to me as he hurried onward. His tone bordered on, dare I say, accusatory. “I lived in a London filled with sparkling streets and green parks. This version of the city is--” he narrowly dodged a workman who was rushing down the pavement in the opposite direction at breakneck speed-- “extremely disturbing to me, I’m sorry to say.”

“Ah.” I looked round the streets as we continued walking, trying to see the familiar city through Jeeves’ eyes. Yes, I suppose I had plastered over the bits of London that didn’t fit in my stories: the dirty bits, the desperate bits, the sad and crowded and rough bits. But I had only done so to create a more perfect world for Jeeves, the perfect valet. I looked over at him, walking stalwartly by my side, at I wished I knew how to tell him that without sounding like a painfully idiotic git. “You get used to it, what?” I said instead.

We reached the offices of Jenkins & Perkins Publishers in short order, silence being our byword the rest of the journey. I ushered Jeeves up the staircase to the third floor. Perky’s secretary was absent as usual, so I let myself in, knowing how that rankled my friend and editor. We found Perky puffing away at a tatty pipe behind his desk, which was stacked sky-high with loose manuscripts and royalty payment records. He was currently shouting away into his telephone’s receiver, and he only just bothered to glance up at me as I sauntered into his office. He was about to ignore me for the mo’ and return to his telephone tirade when his eyes went wide and his pipe threatened to slip from his slack lips. His gaze was fastened at the man looming behind my shoulder, one R. Jeeves.

“I’ll call you back,” Perky mumbled into the ‘phone before slamming down the handset.

“Hullo Perky!” I yodeled. To be honest, I was chuffed to finally know for sure that I wasn’t the only one who could see the apparition. This proved at least I wasn’t completely out of my head.

“Bertie.” My lifelong chum and business partner exercised his bushy eyebrows for a long while. “What in the world have you done?”

I got the impression the impending conversation should be a private one. “Close the door, will you, Jeeves?” Jeeves complied.

Perky goggled. “You call him Jeeves?” he demanded. “Bertie, this is just too thick! You foolish, dangerously delusional, imbecilic--”

“Good afternoon, sir,” Jeeves interrupted, removing his hat in something of a salute and holding the bowler smartly under his arm. “May I presume you are agitated by my unexplained presence much as Mr Wooster was when I first appeared?”

One bushy eyebrow dipped as the other went impossibly higher. “Where the hell did you find this bird, Bertie?” Perky asked.

“Erm, in my flat, actually. I know it sounds daft but,” I gestured to the perfect form of Jeeves, standing there in all his Jeevesiness, “he’s the real Tabasco. No doubt in my mind.”

Perky stood slowly from behind his desk and, his eyes still fastened on Jeeves, beckoned me over to him. “A word, young Wooster,” he said.

I went with him to huddle in the far corner. He whispered frantically at me: “Have you finally gone totally and irreversibly mad? You _hired_ some crazy cove to pretend to be your Jeeves. Bertie, I know you’re invested in your work but this,” he gestured to the valet standing quietly on the other side of the room, “is beyond the pale.”

“I haven’t hired him,” I whispered back calmly. “He just--poof--appeared. Like magic. Oh, and he can do magic as well.” Something worth mentioning, I thought.

Perky clapped a hand over his eyes. “I understand, old top, if the pressure has gotten to you. It happens to even the best of us. What do you need? A week in Cannes? A cruise to New York? I could move your deadline back, say, a few days if that would help at all.” This, coming from Perky, was true charity. But I politely declined.

“I’m not bonkers, Perky. And I think I can prove it to you. Jeeves!” My voice rose to summon the man in the corner.

“Sir?”

“Would you be able to procure a sandwich or some such for Perky here?”

“Certainly, sir.” And in an instant, he had a ham sandwich on a silver salver balanced on his fingertips, as if he’d whipped it out from behind his back.

Perky was not altogether convinced. “Lovely parlour trick,” he said slowly, “but what if I wanted some stew?”

In the blink of an eye, the sandwich was replaced with a steaming bowl of lamb stew, its aroma unmistakable in the small, enclosed office.

“Would this suffice, Mr Perkins?” Jeeves asked.

Do you recall how manfully I refrained from fainting when Jeeves made his powers known to me? It brings me great joy to report that Perky was not able to do the same. His eyes rolled back in his head and he would have slumped to the floor if not for Jeeves’ famous reflexes.

While we waited for him to come round, I had a lovely spot of stew. “Tasty stuff, Jeeves. Well done,” I said as I finished up with the old nosebag.

“Thank you, sir. It was my mother’s recipe.”

This casual statement gave us both pause, I believe. I looked up at the valet and regarded him quizzically. “Your mother?” I parroted.

Jeeves’ brows furrowed as if he needed to exert all his brains to remember something vitally important. “Yes, her name was--” He clenched his eyes tightly in concentration. “Helen. Helen Jeeves. She was a housemaid when she met my father--”

“Clarence.” We both said this at the exact same time.

In the course of writing six novels and several more short stories, a writer often leaves bits on the cutting room floor, so to speak. That is to say, I had a lot of story in my noggin that just didn’t have a place on the page. And Jeeves’ backstory--his past, his childhood, the details of his life outside of his adventures--was just that. Now I knew Jeeves contained all the things I’d crafted for him, both written and unwritten. It was a sobering realisation, that this was not just a flat character of mine; he was an entire man, complete with a family and human feelings.

Oh Lord, I thought suddenly. Those feelings. Did he actually--? Was he really--?

I caught his eye briefly, and I could have sworn his once-stoic gaze faltered into something like yearning. But his eyes flitted away after only a moment.

“Sir, it appears Mr Perkins is beginning to rouse,” he said by way of distracting me.

Perky did wake up to croak, “Jesus H. Christ, Wooster! You brought him to life!” He pointed a shaky finger at said living thing.

“Yes. Well. I didn’t intend to, you know. These things just happen, I suppose.”

Perky’s mouth flapped open and shut a few times, which gave Jeeves cause to murmur, “I shall wait in the hallway, sir, while you and Mr Perkins discuss the matter. I’m sure there are points which he desires to make without my specific input at this juncture.”

“Erm, yes, thank you...Jeeves,” Perky said with a touch of uncertainty.

As soon as Jeeves had floated (quite literally) out the door, Perky whirled on me. “Bertie, I know what you’re thinking. And you mustn’t be rash. Not now. Good God, especially not now.”

I feigned innocence. “Whatever do you mean, Perky?”

“I mean,” he ground out between clenched teeth, “that you have somehow made manifest your--well--your muse, and Bertie, he’s _not real_.” He stressed this point. “You must send him back.”

“Send him back?” I laughed. “I don’t even know how I brought him here! If I, in fact, brought him here. And if I do have whatever power is needed to send him back, I say why should I? Jeeves is a marvel. I’d be loony to get rid of him.”

“He. Is. Not. Real,” Perky repeated.

I harrumphed. “He walks and talks. He has form and substance. He is here, with us, in this world. What makes you or I any more real than Jeeves? He deserves as much as anyone to exist,” I countered.

“So what do you propose? To keep this fictional man in your employ while you continue to write his life?” Perky put a hand to his noggin. “Would that even work? I mean, can he physically stay here while you--?”

“I don’t know!” I cried. “But I don’t care! He’s _mine_ , Perky, the one thing in my life that’s well and truly mine, and you can’t tell me to shove him out the door when he’s only just arrived.” I felt my nostrils flare in the heat of the moment, and I fear I looked quite mad. Which, I’ve always said, is exactly how one looks when one is trying to purport one’s sanity. Remembering this, I took a deep breath and tried again. “I mean to say, this is an extraordinary thing. Who knows what it means for literature? For every aspect of our world? Imagine if we could bring Sherlock Holmes to life to solve all our mysteries.”

“I’m more concerned with accidentally bringing Moriarty to life instead,” Perky grumbled. He picked up his pipe from his desk and chewed on the stem. “Bertie. Please. Don’t do anything rash. I say this as a friend, and not just someone who is about to hand you back line edits.”

I hesitated. “I can’t swear to it, but I’ll try.”

Perky and I shook hands, and I left his offices with a distinctly rolling tum. Jeeves was waiting for me patiently in the hallway, and if he had overheard my shouted conversation with my editor, he gave no sign (but he wouldn’t, would he?). We walked back to the flat in something of a tense state, neither of us speaking beyond the required “Is it a left here, sir?” and “Yes, just round the corner.”

Once safely ensconced back in the old homestead, I thought it prudent to broach the subject of Jeeves’, well, feelings. That glance we’d shared had been a heated one, and as I was his host while Jeeves resided in the real world, it seemed only right to clear the air.

“Jeeves--” I began as I handed over my hat.

But Jeeves jumped the gun, so to speak. “Sir, I must speak plainly, if you’ll allow it.” He somehow got our hats on the hooks that always seemed too slippery for me.

“Of course. Speak away.”

The man seemed to have a difficult time meeting my eyes, for he moved into the sitting room and busied himself with righting picture frames and arranging cushions. “After our visit to Mr Perkins, it is obvious that you are aware of every aspect of my character. That is, there are no secrets I can keep from you, sir.”

I swallowed, fighting for a bit more air. “True, true,” I said.

Jeeves fiddled with the curtains a bit. “I find myself in a unique position, then.” He finished with the curtains and, finding nothing else out of place in the immediate vicinity, turned toward me with his hands clasped behind his back. His gaze was still riveted just slightly away from me when he spoke: “Other men of my disposition rail against God for the lot they’ve been given, but I stand before you. My creator. And given this opportunity, I must demand, sir,” he finally looked at me then, and the utter desperation in his bloodshot eyes cut me to the quick, “why? Why have you made me this way?”

“Oh, Jeeves,” I breathed.

“What possible reason,” he ground out, “could you have had in constructing me in this fashion?” His voice became louder as he picked up speed. “I have lived a life--if it was a life--of intense loneliness and isolation, of heartache and longing.”

“Jeeves, I know--” I tried to get through to him, but he interrupted again.

“Sir, why did you resign me to an eternity of wanting something I could never have?” he insisted. “Why did you make me love you?”

“You weren’t real!” I threw my hands in the air. “I’m sorry, but you weren’t! You were just a story. I didn’t know-- How could I have known you would suddenly appear here in the flat?” I deflated, his dark, soulful eyes making the guilt well up in my chest. “Jeeves. I could never write about you making love to Bertie Wooster in my stories; that would be madness. But surely you see, what with you being here now, your eternity of wanting is over.” I looked away. “If you wish it to be, that is.”

Well, once you lay all your cards out on the table like that, there’s not a lot you can do but wait for the other player to show his hand. And I must say, there’s a good reason why I never liked playing games of skill with cards. The suspense is too much on the Wooster heart, I’m afraid.

Jeeves paused for what seemed like an eon before saying only, “Sir?”

I fidgeted, still not daring to look up from the carpet. “I’m no philosopher, Jeeves. I write comic stories and, once in a blue moon, a light-hearted stage show. I don’t know the ins and outs of theories of free will and all that rot, but if you’re the Jeeves I know (and you must be), then I think you’ll have the wherewithal to tell this Wooster to take a long walk off a short seaside plank structure if, in fact, you decide I’m a chump. I wouldn’t blame you. Most of my acquaintances have informed me of my chump status at one time or a--Mhrumph!”

Of course, as a successful writer, I know a--Mhrumph is not found in any English dictionary. But it’s the only thing I could say when, to my shock and delight, Jeeves shimmered over to me and kissed the words right out of my mouth.

How to describe kissing Jeeves? Step one, I suppose, would be the physical sensations. Let me list a few: soft, warm, pleasantly wet, and a strange, almost tingling quality. Like chewing on cinnamon candies. Step two, how I reacted: I gurgled a bit (see: chump), then caught on mentally, then caught on quite literally. My hands clutched at his broad shoulders, and his hands slid into places that seemed to be a perfect fit for him, namely the back of my coconut and my hip. Steps three through five most likely involve some soppy business, but I’d rather stick to the meat of the thing. It just felt so bally good.

When we parted, Jeeves nuzzled (nuzzled! I mean to say!) against my neck and whispered in my ear: “It’s true you are not exactly the master I knew, sir, but somehow you are the master I knew and more. To love you is the driving force at the very core of my being; why should I deprive myself of it any longer?” He licked at the curve of my throat with a groan. “I have never felt such utter pleasure.”

“Erm.” With all my skill with wordiness, I was a bit ashamed I couldn’t come up with anything better. “I concur. Quite obviously.”

We kissed a bit more, standing there in the sitting room. Jeeves seemed to shiver with his excitement, not a normal shiver, but on a molecular level. It was almost as if I could feel his very skin shifting and winking in and out of existence. I admit I was more than a little worried about Jeeves floating away, so I ceased our labial exchanges for a moment.

“Jeeves,” I panted, “are you all right?”

Jeeves looked down at his hands, which were currently clutching at my forearms. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “No,” he said softly.

I looked down as well. His hands were--I can’t say it any other way--fading out of sight. It was as if Jeeves was composed of ink that was fading with age.

“What’s happening to you?” I asked. My heart stopped in fear. Jeeves was disappearing back into the ether, or wherever he came from.

His eyes held real panic was he watched the fade creep up his arm. “I thought I would have more time,” he murmured, “but it appears I do not belong in this world.”

“The hell you don’t!” I grabbed him by the elbow, trying to stop the cold, clammy, altogether wrong feeling of the fade from going any further. “I just got you, Jeeves! You can’t leave now.”

“That decision is not mine to make.” Jeeves tried to pull my hand off. “Sir, please, don’t let it touch you!”

My hand went suddenly numb as the strange disease spread. My fingers began to flicker out of sight, and I pulled back in terror. Now Jeeves’ whole body was fading in and out, and he doubled over as if in great pain.

“Jeeves!” Concern won out over cowardice, and I threw my arms about his shaking shoulders.

“No, sir!” he said even as he held me. “It might hurt you!”

“I don’t give a damn.” I looked into what was left of his beautiful face, the face I knew better than I knew my own. “Wherever it’s taking you, that’s where I want to go.”

Dryness stole over my skin, making my entire body feel papery. I felt very thin, like someone had compressed me flat. My vision blurred, and I tried desperately to ensure Jeeves’ face was the last thing I saw. My hand found his cheek, and I felt the last of his real tears against my fingertips.

“Sir,” he gasped, “I love--”

Then all was, as they say, blackness.

Then. Light. Blinding white on the insides of my eyelids. I woke up slowly, coming into all the new sensations little by little. The stiffness of a very new collar round my neck. Something cool and slick in my hand. A pair of incredibly comfortable shoes on my feet. The roughness of sandstone under my palms.

“I say.” I opened my eyes and nearly had a heart attack. I was clinging to a windowsill quite a few stories above the street, and Jeeves was beside me.

“...swing with with the correct timing, we will be able to reach the far window safely,” he was saying. “Ready, sir?”

“Oh,” I cried. “Right-o!”

“On three, sir. One, two--” We swung and tumbled into what turned out to be my own bally sitting room. Though how that was possible, what with our clinging being down on the edifice of an unfamiliar building, I’m not certain.

Getting over my initial jolt, I took stock of my surroundings. I saw Jeeves standing there in the sitting room before me, shining like the paragon he was. Except. Except everything was shining, a bit. As if the entire world was suffused by a gentle glow. I held up my hands and stared at them.

“Jeeves,” I said in wonder, “everything is beautiful.”

He smiled gently. “You made it so, sir.”

“So I’m--?”

“In your fictional world, yes.”

“Golly.” I rushed to the window. The bustle of the city! The smell of flowers being sold on the corner! The gleeful shouts of children and the cheery tootles of automobiles! “My London. Just as I imagined it,” I said.

Here I was, finally in the world I’d created for myself. And I had Jeeves, in the way I’d always dreamed. I turned to my man, overjoyed at our good fortune. But my smile fell when I saw Jeeves staring past me blankly.

“With the notable exception,” he said, “that you never imagined us, sir. Here. Together.”

“So we’ll never--?” My elation crumbled. Outside the window, a thunderstorm suddenly took shape, complete with gale winds and lightning strikes. I watched it dully.

“I fear so, sir,” he said quietly.

Realisation dawned. I brightened. The sky brightened. “Jeeves!” I ejaculated. “I’m the writer! I can do whatever I bloody want!”

To prove the point, four snappily dressed footmen pranced into the flat, each bearing a rather large gift of gold, jewels, books, and cigarettes for Jeeves. These were heaped at his feet, and then the footmen pranced out again.

“See?” I said.

Jeeves removed a small coronet from his head with some dignity. “Indeed, sir,” he said.

Well, that decided that. I did my best shimmer over to Jeeves and rather put us back on track in terms of this kissing business. If I say it felt like I was dreaming, you must understand I was. In a way.

“Sir,” Jeeves finally got the breath to ask at one point, “it grieves me to think I am keeping you from your real life, your actual friends and family, to participate in what is essentially an illusion.”

“Dash real life,” I murmured, kissing him again. “It hasn’t got a patch on this.”

“I tend to agree, sir.” Jeeves guided me to my room, where we could stay for years just being together. And so we did.

 

 

 

fin

 

 

 


End file.
